Well, we are in the thick of the Easter holiday tourism adventure, and once again I am writing this before I go out on the taxi rank, because I have got no desire to be trying to write to you at the same time as busily trying not to reverse over tourists.
If I manage not to squish somebody before Easter Monday I will be doing very well. Tourists seem to have even more of an inclination to suicidally reckless behaviour even than sheep.
I am pleased to tell you that after a thoroughly dampening commencement to the holiday, today the sun is warm and benevolent. Well, warmish. I have not yet felt any great longing to remove my thermal vest, although the tourists are displaying a touching exhibition of wishful holiday behaviour, and many of them have peeled their clothes off right down to their underwear. They are now pink and sunburned, and shivering in the April breeze.
It made this morning’s fell walk a contented affair. I wore my second-grade coat, not the thick one with the woolly layers, and strolled along in the sunshine, listening to underdressed tourists yelling at their children and, inexplicably, playing music on their telephones, and feeling very glad indeed that a walk over the fells is a regular occurrence in my life and not something to be treasured and remembered as a special one-off holiday experience. I would have been very disappointed if it was the latter. They would have a much better time in a couple of days after everybody has gone home.
I sloped off over the top to avoid the footpath, and was rewarded by meeting a deer who seems to have taken up residence there. We met one another yesterday, and stood and stared curiously at each other for quite some time, until Rosie thought perhaps the deer might like to charge about and bark with her, after which it disappeared quite quickly. She was there again this morning. I think she must be avoiding the footpath as well.
We both worked late last night, until the nightclub finally booted the last revellers out of its doors at three, and then set to addressing a small problem that had arisen during the course of the evening, which was that the passenger door on Oliver’s car was refusing to shut. Neither of us had the smallest idea what might be causing this difficulty, which was a nuisance because the door kept flying open, and so in the end we tied it shut with some string, and had a cautious little procession home along the silent streets.
They fixed it between them when Mark called this afternoon. I have not yet got my string back. It is still in the back of Oliver’s car. I must request it later.
The sky was just beginning to get light when I crawled into bed, a sure sign of the shifting seasons, and I was not up early today. I watered the conservatory, a task made far less tedious by gassing to Elspeth on the telephone as I was doing it. She was planting her tomato seedlings. I do like our modern world. When I was a child all telephone conversation was done, for some reason incomprehensible to us now, standing in a draughty hallway. This was true in every house, not just ours, and I recall the faint whiff of scandal that eventually attached itself to the first people who decided to have a second telephone in their bedrooms.
This did not last long. Eventually everybody decided they would like to have their conversations in luxurious comfort, and now we have a complete telephone culture. I do like this.
Apart from that I have not achieved very much. I made my taxi picnic and am about to go to work. I reflected whilst I was doing it that perhaps it is one of the nice things about Mark being away.
I can eat smoked mackerel and onions in unlimited quantities, and know that for once this will be an actual advantage if anybody tries to kiss me.
Hurrah.
